Player Thoughts On The Mod 22 Launch (And Hopes For A Future)

So I tried finding a similar thread, but couldn't seem to find one, in case I missed it or it got buried deep; my apologies!

Firstly, congratulations to Cryptic on yet another smooth launch! There was no extended maintenance, no login issues, and the general gameplay of the new area went smoothly without any major bugs affecting my ability to cap the weekly haul.

However, there were some things I'd like to see addressed:

Bug: You can interact with the Dragon Sight Artifact multiple times to gain twice the dragon jewel's drops. Is this intended?

Bug: "Require Ward to Upgrade" game option doesn't stop you from wasting upgrade materials on enchantments. Now that there are 3 slots that can be protected my suggestion is an option to "lock" a slot by interacting (right-clicking on PC) with it to ensure no upgrade is done if no ward is in the slot as per the previous design.

Annoyance: While the heroics feel a lot more fast-paced and easy enough to do, I feel they could be improved by adding a "final phase" timer that lasts for at least a minute. There were several moments during my hours of gameplay that I saw an HE up on the map, only to half-way get there and it disappeared despite the timer going from several minutes to a few seconds (last phase on boss kill usually). This brought me out of the immersion somewhat, and was a bit annoying as there's no way to truly gauge the level of progression of an HE due to the aforementioned time switching.

Weapon Modifications: These have been permanently reset for all artifact weapons, meaning all the bonuses need to be reapplied costing many cubes of augmentation. Does Cryptic plan to address this in any manner? Some of us have multiple sets, and I feel even if a stack was given it wouldn't be enough.

And lastly, but most importantly;

The zone is BEAUTIFUL! The landscape and architecture is stunning, and visually pleasing, with plenty of diversity. I never felt that areas were repeating or "tiled", and I felt immersed for the majority of my 8-hour experience, and while I managed to cap my weekly haul in that time alongside the in-depth exploration of the zone, I felt myself feeling "what now?". There is so much open world, but it doesn't feel "alive" enough. There is very little to do aside from the 3 sets of NPCs giving out repeatables in each zone, the heroic encounters, the farming for pants/shirts/rings, collection items and of course the reputation grind which is the focal point of obtaining all the new goodies via way of fashion etc. I REALLY hope that additional content can be added into the zone over time, to bring more life, and more to do.

Reaper's Challenge is a wonderful example of giving an additional reason to run a specific queue for decent rewards, so if something similar in concept (not specifically a dungeon) could be introduced in the way of a daily run that is fun and not necessarily a choir, and gave a currency to pick specific rewards worthwhile to the community, that could help add to the world.

Also, the grind for certain items, while priced fairly, can definitely introduce burn-out which I'm afraid of, as there's only so many times I can do the same thing before I start to dislike the content, and therein the new zone. Please consider adding additional ways in which to earn all needed currencies for the campaign store goodies, and faction store goodies. Consider world nodes, mob kills, crafting; break it up into small tasks that can be done at the will of the player vs. being forced to do very specific tasks prone to burn-out.

Would love to hear what others think!

TL;DR: Amazing open-world map, but needs more content to feel "alive" and lessen burn-out.